Excerpt from "Their own names on the door" (subscription required) . . .
According to the American Bar Foundation's 2000 lawyer statistical report, some 89% of all law firms have less than 10 lawyers, and 76% have between two and five lawyers.
Of lawyers in private practice, 48% are on their own -- up from 45% in 1991. Only 18% of all lawyers in private practice are at firms with more than 50 lawyers.
. . .
The reasons lawyers choose to leave large firms and strike out on their own are varied, but most cite the desire for flexibility in their practices. That includes flexibility in determining billing rates (most boutiques charge less) and which clients to serve. And, of course, lawyers who work for themselves don't have to work into the wee hours at the behest of a senior partner or worry about meeting a billable-hour requirement for the year.
Excerpt from 20% of UK Managing Partners want to leave the law . . .
I speculate that there are three reasons for the responses of the Managing Partners (whom I believe have one of the toughest jobs on the planet):
1) they are frequently under-trained and undereducated in management;
2) they lead people who too often have little desire to follow
3) they have tasted a life that is a departure from the grind of finding work, recording hours and billing clients and they seek an environment that will value their learned managerial and leadership skills.
Excerpt from "Hypergraphia: A River of Words: Is hypergraphia—the compulsive need to write—a gift or a curse?" . . .
Tales of writers possessed by the muse on steroids date back to the first-century Roman poet Juvenal, who wrote about "the incurable writing disease." But it wasn't until the 20th century that scientists explored the brain chemistry behind this lust for language.
Excerpt from "Chuck DuMars: Self-confessed cowboy counsels on water law" (subscription required) . . .
Julia Davis Stafford, whose family-owned CS Cattle Co. has been using DuMars' legal services for at least 15 years, says it's the attorney's background that makes him such a good water law lawyer.
"He comes from a ranching background, and he comes to water from a personal experience as a caretaker of the land," Davis Stafford says. "We have relied on him as a personal friend and as a water expert and attorney to advise us. He is well-known and respected throughout the country. He has a real sense of the long range and of what will work best for his clients."
Excerpt from Blawg Review #115 . . .
Readers from outside the UK may have noticed that we’ve just had a spot of bother with car bombs (A Stitch in Haste did). I’m a Londoner, home and work, and, while I generally prefer people not to try to blow up bits of the city, I was heartened to note the way in which the two London attempts were stopped. Britain, or at least England, is obsessed with traffic regulations and binge drinking, these being generally viewed as bad things. One bomb attempt was prevented as a result of inebriates staggering out of a nightclub, the other by the car being towed away for illegal parking. To the drunkards and parking wardens of London, I’m proud of you.
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